Five Reports of Fugitive Dust

In Mary Mercier’s debut poetry collection, she shares her experiences of nature—as a part of it, rather than as a mere onlooker. The author’s scientific background merges with her poetic skills. When we consider ourselves and humanity part of nature, our interpersonal connections thrive and provide us a life beyond what’s right in front of us. These poems expose nature’s wisdom in a near-magical way, as nature always knows what to do. This book reminds us that we are constantly learning and simultaneously know right where we need to be. 2023 Birdy Poetry Prize Finalist . . . Mary Mercier finds the dazzling in the diurnal, the magical in the mundane, delivering deep and abiding human truths in the form of mail from the natural world. These are poems of compassion and gratitude, metamorphosis and transformation, in which rock can become deer, deer can become tree, tree can become poet “half in this world/ half in the next.” Inextricably mixing mystery and clarity, the poems are formally nimble, effortlessly lyrical, acts of attention and tenderness. In a world of “fugitive dust,” of doubt and darkness and decay, in which there is often no “salve for the wound, rose without thorn, or rain sufficient to call forth spring,” Mercier goes about her affirmative work “turning sunlight’s currency/ to song.” This is simply a book of marvels, a marvel of a book. — Ronald Wallace, author of Long for This World: New & Selected Poems Here the reader is ushered into the natural world where so much is just waiting for us to uncover, to allow us to more readily “glide into joy.” . . . Reading these poems filled me with a renewed sense of anticipation for the unnoticed and still-unrevealed wonder living all around us. I want to do as she says: “Hold the shell that is the world./ Put it to your ear.” — Andrea Potos, author of Her Joy Becomes and Marrow of Summer